Oregon prisons need mental-health improvements

Those who run prisons, including prisons in Oregon, face the difficult task of balancing inmate and staff safety against the mental health of some inmates. The situation is about to improve a bit in Oregon.

The state’s Department of Corrections has reached an agreement with Disability Rights Oregon, a federally funded advocacy group, to improve conditions for the system’s most severely mentally ill prisoners who are housed in its Behavioral Health Unit in Salem. The price tag for the improvements is expected to run to $8.2 million annually, money that will have to come from the Legislature.

Among the changes, prisoners will be given at least 20 hours per week outside their cells, half of which must be spent in structured activities, including treatment by mental health care providers. Too, corrections officials will seek to expand the physical size of the unit to create more space, making it easier to manage dangerous but ill prisoners.

While the changes fall far short of what the advocacy group sought from the Legislature last year, they’re a much-needed improvement that should help prevent mentally ill prisoners from deteriorating in isolation.

Guarding prisoners, especially those whose illnesses makes them particularly dangerous, is no simple matter. That’s one good reason for the additional training the corrections department agreed to. Guards and other staff will be given more information about such things as the side effects of medications as well as more training in crisis intervention.

The changes proposed should be good ones to improve the conditions for some of the state’s most challenging prisoners.

— The Bulletin, Bend, Jan. 17

Brown’s minimum-wage plan stands a chance in 2016 Legislature

Gov. Kate Brown’s proposed minimum wage increase has already generated opposition from both sides of the issue, which might mean it has an outside chance of passing. That’s undoubtedly Brown’s intention. Whether she and majority Democratic leaders can push it through remains to be seen, and the debate could have large implications for the November election.

Brown’s proposal would set two separate minimums, one for the Portland area and one for the rest of the state.

Outside Portland, the minimum wage would go from the present $9.25 an hour — already second highest in the nation — to $10.25 an hour next January, then gradually increase to a high of $13.50 an hour in 2022, after which it would be indexed to inflation, as is the existing minimum. Portland’s wage would go to $11.79 in 2017 and rise to $15.52 over six years.

One incentive for enacting a higher minimum this session is to head off planned initiative campaigns on the November ballot, one of which would set a statewide $15-an-hour minimum starting in 2019. The other, backed by labor unions, would set the wage at $13.50 and repeal a state-imposed ban on higher local wages. Supporters of the two measures have not agreed to drop their efforts.

Opponents of Brown’s plan, including Republican legislators and business groups including the restaurant industry, argue the move would cost jobs, especially in restaurants. The lobbying group Oregon Restaurant and Lodging Association said the proposal would mean the loss of 55,000 jobs statewide.

In Seattle, which started phasing in $15 minimum last year, initial figures suggested there might be a slight dip in the number of restaurant jobs, but nowhere near the thousands suggested by the Oregon restaurant group. Overall, the jobless rate in the Seattle area is at its lowest level since 2008.

The restaurant group supports an offset for tipped employees, even under Oregon’s existing minimum wage. That’s something to consider with this proposal, even if it’s obvious most tipped employees are hardly getting rich.

Putting more money in the pockets of minimum wage workers gives them greater buying power, which supports the economy, too. And a sizable percentage of minimum-wage workers are adults, not teenagers living at home. Still, advocates for raising the wage were hardly overjoyed at Brown’s plan, which falls short of what they are aiming for.

If the Legislature rejects Brown’s proposal and fails to pass a bill, the issue is almost certain to wind up in voters’ hands in November. Opponents on both sides should consider what that means: Perhaps an even higher minimum wage, or perhaps no increase at all. We suspect Brown’s compromise would look better to the losing side at that point.